


The Only Way to Lose that Fearful Feeling

by Elleth



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Grey-Ace Fjord, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Queerplatonic Relationships, Relationship Negotiation, Sharing Body Heat, Tea, aroace Caduceus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27784144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: The only way to lose that fearful feelingReplace it with love that's healingEvening conversations with Fjord and Caduceus to ease their minds and clarify some things after their meeting with the Tomb Takers.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Fjord/Jester Lavorre (implied), Fjord/Sabian (mentioned)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	The Only Way to Lose that Fearful Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Mild AU in that I wrote this before Ep 117 and liked the premise too much to scrap it - they're staying in the ruins for the evening, and Caleb casts the dome rather than the tower to stay in. 
> 
> The title is from [Birdtalker - Heavy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioMByL8KtBk).

Sleep kept eluding Fjord. 

They'd found Molly. He'd almost lost Caduceus. 

It disquieted him. 

That, and the cold of Eiselcross was so intense - or the magic so strange there - that the frost penetrated even through the dome, radiating from the ground below and the shelter above, and though it was more comfortable than being exposed to the elements, it ate at him. Huddled with the rest of the Mighty Nein, and with only Jester sitting up on watch in a pile of blankets and coats, the icy feeling wasn't entirely physical. 

It wasn't a surprise to him that sleep was hard to come by. For a while, he tried to follow Caduceus' advice. It'd worked out well for him plenty of times now, so he listened. 

He listened to the cracks and groans of the ice and stone and remnants of Aeor around them, hollow and deep and echoing. He listened to the quiet breaths and occasional shivering noises or sleepy sighs that the rest of the Nein made. The Tomb Takers, huddled together a little ways away in an alcove in an encampment of their own, were eerily silent. 

He found himself unable to dive into the calm of meditation and the warmth of the Wildmother's embrace. She was hovering at the edges of his awareness, though, and he was forced to acknowledge that Caduceus had been right again. Even here, even in his restlessness, he could feel her. 

_I don't know what to do_ , he admitted in his thoughts, and knew that she was listening. _We came here for… for answers, I suppose, but I can't even tell what the question is any longer. And I'm uneasy. Today was a close call. Caduceus - he came to us after we'd lost Molly, and now that we've found Molly again, Lucien, whoever he says he is, it feels as if we - as if I - might lose Caduceus._

He finished the thought with an audible sigh, then held still, listening. There was no answer from the Wildmother. He'd have to work it out himself.

*

The exertion of the day had probably helped him doze off, after all.

Fjord woke up to a shifting of blankets and bodies. On the other side of the pile they were sleeping in, Caduceus sat up and breathed one of his sonorous noises. 

"Ooh. It's _cold_ ," he observed plaintively and exchanged places with Jester, who burrowed into the person pile with a murmured, "Yeah. Maybe cast something to keep warm. Good night, Caduceus," and before he could answer, she was breathing the low, regular breaths of someone instantly asleep. 

Fjord watched furtively as Caduceus wrapped his larger form into the discarded pile of coverings Jester had left, tucked his ears under his cap, and drew his knees up to his chest to wrap his arms around them. 

Quiet settled again. Sleep failed to come back to him. 

"I can tell that you're awake, Fjord," Caduceus eventually said, in a low voice. "Come join me so we can talk without waking the others." 

Fjord's stomach did a strange flip in response, but he peeled himself out of the cocoon he'd made of his gear, ducked over to Caduceus through the cold, and settled under the blankets he held open in invitation, at his side, swallowing hard as a furred arm came around his shoulders to adjust the wrappings to seal the warmth into them, before withdrawing once more.

It was palpably warmer in there, not just because his heart was suddenly stuttering a crazy rhythm, and the closeness did nothing to slow it down. There also was a mix of scents, confusing to his brain and body, of having Caduceus so close and also still catching whiffs of Jester's perfume in the blankets.

Having Caduceus right there won over his attention, though.

"You know," Caduceus began, his gaze unfocused into the dark, while the glow of the Tomb Takers' fire painted an outline of dim light around his form. "The Wildmother doesn't often communicate with me through dreams. When it's important she does, and she did tonight. She told me that you were worrying about me, and I - this is not my usual purview. We're stepping into dangerous territory, _unknown_ territory. This has something to do with the City in the Astral Sea, something that even the Wildmother doesn't entirely understand, and I can't say that I like it. It scares me." Caduceus' voice rumbled through Fjord's chest, catching on the scar tissue there, and forced his muscles to relax in spite of the dark words. 

Caduceus continued. "And you have all been acting strangely around this erstwhile… _friend_ … of yours. It's not something that we advise at the Blooming Grove, resurrecting the dearly departed after the minds of the living have gone through some of the grieving process and found some closure. Certainly we do not resurrect to an end like _this_." Caduceus gave a sweeping, encompassing gesture at everything around them, and tucked his arm back under. 

"All of which is to say that I don't want to put blame on you or any of the others, but I think it's time to clear the air between the two of us to take something off of both our minds. We can't afford to be distracted." 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Fjord said, brief and - he hoped - final. A chuckle from Caduceus rippled through him almost immediately, and he breathed out slowly and tried to focus his thoughts.

"Okay, yes, I do. But I - would you mind making us some tea?" Fjord asked instead. "I need to think about what to actually say." 

Caduceus' face brightened. "That's a good idea, that's great," he said. "And I don't only mean the tea. I'm here to help you through this, but just because I've arrived at a conclusion doesn't mean that you admitted the same thing to yourself yet. This is good. Yeah. Take some time to think. I'll make us tea; I think this calls for some from the Casala family." 

"Casala?" Fjord asked while Caduceus set up his amethyst, his kettle, measured ice into it from outside the dome and let it melt before adding tea from his pack. Of course it meant that Caduceus had to leave the blanket nest they were both wrapped up in, and Fjord couldn't help regret the lack of a warm firbolg body next to him.

Caduceus didn't look up. "Ah. Textile family. If I recall, I made their tea the day your friends came to the Blooming Grove for my help in rescuing you, and then again a couple of times throughout our journeys. It's a comforting brew, and a very good one," he explained in a slow, measured voice that Fjord, without noticing, had come to associate with comfort. "I believe it's a good choice for tonight." 

"Yeah…" Fjord agreed faintly. He leaned forward to rest his head on his knees when his thoughts began to run away with him again. There were few occasions he could recall that involved feeling at quite such a loss, and it was as impossible to put all of it into words. Eventually, after a stretch of not altogether comfortable - though also not entirely uncomfortable - silence, Caduceus pressed a mug of hot tea into Fjord's hand before fetching his own and coming back into the warmth of the blanket pile, and moving back against Fjord's body. "This is going to help us both relax," he rumbled. "I'm a little nervous as well." 

Fjord surreptitiously shifted, but something in him kept him from breaking contact entirely. He breathed on the steaming liquid and finally took a careful sip of the reddish-golden tea. Almost immediately, the image of an overgrown graveyard shimmered into his mind, and Caduceus among the headstones with an armful of red-purple flowers, moving like he belonged there, moving like he had moved in the Cinderrest Sanctum and moving like he had moved at the Menagerie. 

It filled Fjord with unexpected warmth that didn't immediately come from the tea itself. 

"You ever get lonely there? At home?" he asked. 

"Hmm. All the time," Caduceus replied. "I was fine on my own, but I missed my family, and I'm glad I found this one, and that I got to save mine. It was a long time to be alone." 

"Yeah," Fjord agreed, looking over the sleeping forms of his friends, and sipped more of his tea. At the edge of his vision, Caduceus loomed, his long fingers folded around his mug. Fjord swallowed. 

With an effort, he pulled his mind back on track. "I'm… I couldn't think of any place I'd rather be as long as we're together. I never expected to find that, to be here - not physically, be here -" and he reached to touch the spot above his heart through the blankets," - or receive the blessing of the Wildmother. When I washed up on that shore with the Sword of Fathoms, I was a different person, and I think I told this to Beau once, I've changed my skin a couple of times over, and it's the best thing that ever happened to me. I don't want it to stop, and… I think along the way, I -" 

He stopped, fidgeted with the edge of a blanket, let it fall again, and fell quiet. Caduceus was silent beside him, waiting. He didn't say a word, but his ears, free of the cap now, were attentive, angled forward. 

" - I wouldn't have gotten here without you," he admitted. That was the truth as well, even if not the truth he'd been meaning to express. "I'd never have found the Wildmother's guidance without you, this freedom. Even with the oath I took, I feel freer than I ever did before. I thought about it, what I learned from you, and I was expecting it to chafe, to be a burden. It isn't." 

"That's good. I believe you made the right decision taking it, and it does help to have her guidance. I couldn't imagine where I would be if I had ignored her dream, or not gone with you. Where I would be without communing with her for guidance." Caduceus gave Fjord a sideways glance, and the way Fjord felt Caduceus' eyes coming to rest on him - pride shining through warm and bright and obvious - made it hard to carry on a straight thought once again. 

"Yeah. I'm glad we're both here." Fjord breathed out in a long, low huff, set his teacup to his lips and swallowed deeply, hissing when the gulp of tea scalded his mouth.

Caduceus hummed. "Careful, it's still hot." 

"I noticed," Fjord replied with a low laugh, swallowing down the tea, but almost immediately it seemed the calming properties of whatever plant Caduceus had brewed helped relax his limbs and soothe his mind. 

"I think what I'm wanting to say is - you don't just _inspire_ me, Caduceus. You mean the world to me, and I don't - it's confusing. I don't know what to say, it isn't like I have a lot of experience with - with _this_ \- I…" 

The reply came quick, almost too quick to be the genuine, thoughtful kind of answer that Caduceus usually gave. This - this would almost seem _flustered_ , if that were an idea Fjord associated with him. It certainly would seem that way with anyone else. Fjord hid a smile.

"Oh, me neither, but you knew that already." 

"I - oh right, the butcher. You told us. Yeah." Fjord bit his tongue, and suddenly something clicked into place in his mind. "So when you're saying… 'other people are easy', you mean - " 

"- I mean I'm more interested in watching, generally. I'm there, but don't really come into it myself. Shenanigans are fun, it's great to see how we all interact, there's so much going on with the Nein, it never gets boring." 

"But you've never had - been with - anyone?" 

" _Nooo_." 

"You haven't ever even had a relationship?" 

"Well, I've had many relationships. With my family, with the Wildmother, with everyone here. But no, not in the way you'd generally use the term. It's complicated. I'm not done working myself out, and who knows if or how it'll change in the future, but I do know…" 

A spot of silence elapsed. Fjord had to remind himself to breathe. Caduceus' voice dipped from his ordinary rumble into a lower, smoother, gentler timbre. 

"... I know that I care about you, Fjord. I meant it when I said it was worth leaving my home to hear you say that I inspired you. That you're a miracle. Someone's." He stopped himself with his lips pursed. Fjord would be lying to himself if he weren't - weren't hoping for a particular word to follow.

_Mine._

Caduceus paused, shook his head just slightly, and paused again before picking up the thread of the conversation. "But when I say _I care_ , I don't know how exactly, and I don't - it's not the same way you care for me, I don't think. I told you once, we are encouraged to find out what's true for us by the Wildmother. Sometimes it's hard, especially if you're in it. But about you - I noticed that a while ago, and I thought it would be better to wait for you to come to me than to force you, and here you are, so I hope it's safe to say this now." 

Fjord hummed a low affirmation in response.

"It's - I didn't know you'd noticed." He also found his voice slipping lower. "But yeah, it's - it's a weight off my chest, honestly. It's like you said - it's pretty damn confusing for me as well. I've - there's you, and there's Jester, although I don't know where I stand with her, and there was Sabian, back in the day, and Avantika, although that - that was a means to an end, and I hope that's done with for good now. She never had any - I didn't enjoy that. I generally - I don't tend to need… _it_ … very much." 

Caduceus' forehead creased into a frown. Just slightly, but it was enough to drive the heat of being caught in a lie into Fjord's face. He knew exactly what part of his words Caduceus didn't believe.

"Okay, I - I didn't enjoy it much with Avantika, _not much_ ," Fjord amended. "There was something missing with that - I don't think it's missing with you. _Would be_ missing with you."

Caduceus hummed, too, and closed his eyes. "I never knew how complicated this would be when you got drawn into it," but his lips pursed in a half-smile. "It's still not for me. Would you be okay with that, Fjord?" 

There was, undeniably, a twinge of disappointment in the pit of his stomach, but Fjord paused, took another mouthful of tea, and swallowed it down. It went down much easier this time. "It's not like I'm having much of a choice. I - I want to be - there are moments I want to be - close to you, but there never was a time to bring this up. How uncomfortable does that make you? Knowing that?" 

"Knowing that - not much. Not at all, really. Closeness I can do. We're close _now_." 

Caduceus chuckled, pointing that out. His eyes opened and came to rest on Fjord again. "I cuddled with Jester the other day while we took a watch together, that first night out without the dome or the tower. Hardly the first time." He grinned. "I might even help you with - or maybe not. I don't know that yet." He stopped himself mid-sentence. "No, now's not the time for that. It's too cold here, you don't want to do that, and I think we need our wits about us before we make this any more confusing. If we're still alive whenever it's time to go back somewhere warmer, we can talk about that. I might have to talk to Jester's mother about this; there are many things I'd have to learn about the physical urges of other people. It's all - theoretical, for me." 

Then he stopped to think and cringed ever so slightly. "Oh yeah, no. Or maybe not." Fjord couldn't be sure in the low light in the dome, but it seemed that Caduceus' skin, just visible through the fine fur on his face, seemed to colour in a blush.

Caduceus laughed in a way that seemed completely oblivious to the way Fjord's mind was currently racing about what exactly Caduceus had meant. He cleared his throat and tried to mask the strangled sound that wanted out. His cheeks and ears were burning, too, so there was that.

"Deucey… you're not making this easier, so I'll just pretend you didn't say that just now. That ball's in your court anyway, talk to me about that when you figure out what you mean. I just. I wanted to get this out, that's all, because I've been thinking, and I hope to the gods that I'm wrong - this would be a time for symmetry if anything is, and when I prayed to the Wildmother earlier, I didn't get a response."

"Just to be clear, you're not saying that you had feelings for your friend, the one we came to chase down? What kind of symmetry do you mean?" 

"No. Not what I mean, I wasn't involved with Molly in that way. I'm just thinking - after what happened today - I don't want to lose you. You've had - a couple of close calls, and we've both - we've both been dead once, and we both know that it gets harder to come back every time it happens."

"That wasn't the first time I came back, to be honest," Caduceus explained in his steady voice, draining his teacup and setting it aside. Fjord followed suit. "There are rituals that we undergo - in the Blooming Grove. To honour the part of death that is the Wildmother's, its physical aspect that isn't associated with the Raven Queen - to truly understand that, to honestly embody who we are and what we do, we all, my parents and my siblings and I, all of us except Clarabelle so far, we all had to know how to be part of the earth and nourish what we grow, and understand the expression of her joy in it. I never told anyone this, and I hope that Nila and the Guiatao Clan weren't too shocked if they found it - we have a fortune of diamonds at home, for these rituals. Doing this - it's been part of the family as far back as our stories go. But I never went down in a fight before, so that was new, and I'm not sure if any of it before that counts into the burden that coming back generally places on someone. It was… nice. Peaceful."

"For someone who looks like you do, you're hiding a lot of darkness to all that pink and green," was all Fjord managed to say to that. He felt faint, suddenly, even more so than when he'd seen how Nott's exploding arrow had flung Caduceus aside and snuffed the life out of his body. 

"Yeah," Caduceus agreed cheerfully. "Although not all of it is dark. It is hard to be scared of what's to come when you know what it feels like to be a part of a plant drinking up the sunlight. It's not something to aspire to prematurely, but it's not half bad either, when it happens. It's natural, that's what we'll all be eventually."

"Still pretty damn dark to me," Fjord replied. "My point is… I - " he stopped before the next word formed, and cleared his throat again, and dug his tusk into his upper lip. This would be a sure way to spook Caduceus. He was sure of that.

When there was no interruption, only a pause stretching on into awkwardness, he finally found the heart to continue speaking.

"I _care about you_ as well. Deeply. And I would hate to lose you. I don't know what any of this is, really, I just know - I haven't felt like this for a friend before. It's more than that, but I don't know how. It just feels - you joined us after we'd lost Molly. Now we found Molly, and we - I - we - almost lost you to the ice elementals today. I don't want to think of what would have happened if that fight had gone just a little differently. That's all."

Caduceus regarded him with a long, soft look from half-lidded eyes. Fjord knew the expression: Caduceus was reading him like a book, with every page open to him. 

Fjord didn't mind being read. Not by Caduceus.

More silence elapsed, Fjord's eyes lifting to Caduceus' lips, gaze lingering there, and then to his eyes, framed by those absurdly long lashes. 

Caduceus smiled, and his eyes lost the contemplative, focused expression they'd worn, narrowing just slightly. He seemed to have come to his conclusion - confirmation, really, of something he'd already confirmed he knew.

"You know what, and I think I can say this, even though you didn't in these same words," Caduceus explained, apparently not in the slightest rattled to hear Fjord's abortive confession. "If that even still needed saying, I love you too. I love all of you. You're all just great people with a great destiny ahead of you. But - you especially, Fjord. I don't use the word _miracle_ lightly." 

Until then, the air had been freezing around them, their breaths visible as clouds of steam - until they weren't, and Caduceus smiled. "Oh, hey, look at that. I think she's listening now, and I think she approves."

"Of… us?" Fjord's throat was dry, but there was an undeniable happiness, a glowing warmth throughout his body. "Of this?" 

"Yes." Caduceus smiled at him again and shrugged the blankets off. He pulled the cap from his head, leaving mussed hair in its wake, a stark pink strand standing up absurdly. He didn't seem to notice, or care. "That's nice. That's much nicer. Thank you." He rubbed his hands and smiled into the air, as if he was able to see the Wildmother's hand sheltering them. Maybe he was. 

Surreptitiously, Fjord leaned a little closer. It wasn't necessary any longer, the lack of cold now stripping away the excuse to be close to Caduceus in the first place, but he couldn't help it. Didn't want to help it. 

He wasn't sure if he imagined the breath of warm wind like laughter on his back, nudging him a little closer still to Caduceus, who held still, watched Fjord, and smiled. He didn't make a move to reciprocate, but he didn't break away either.

"Do you mind?" Fjord asked eventually. He was relishing leaning on Caduceus, the consciousness and lack of purpose to it. He wasn't seeking any more warmth; he didn't have to. 

Long fingers twined through his. "No," Caduceus said, his hand gentle in Fjord's.

"And about the other thing you said - I don't know what'll happen, because it sometimes feels like someone is steering… all of this. And if we're just figures in someone else's story, there is merit to what you're saying. But in that case we're all in danger, and in either case we don't know much yet; there's a curtain I can't glimpse beyond. But life generally doesn't operate that way. If something happens, it'll be a connection of chance and circumstance, not because someone is moving our game pieces a particular way. That's not how the gods operate, at least not the ones I know, and I wouldn't know who else had that power." 

Silence ticked by. Caduceus' chest expanded when he breathed, and then relaxed again. His fingers, still wrapped around Fjord's, were warm, and the short fur there downy-soft where it tickled Fjord's skin.

"Hearing that makes me feel a little better," Fjord finally said, softly, after letting the words turn over in his mind. "For a while I was expecting for the Tomb Takers to ambush us the moment we set foot into their space, but if it turns out they _actually_ want our help and don't mind us following, we might even get out of this alive. I think by now we can say that this isn't the same thing as Obann, even though it smelled the same in the beginning."

"No, no it's not the same thing. This is different. Larger. We'll learn something here, I think, something that we will need to know. About the City." There was an edge to Caduceus' voice now, briefly, and a note of unease rippling all around. "But I don't know enough about that either, not even to talk about it. I think it's about time that I woke up Caleb for the next watch. Would you mind if I - with you -" he indicated his head toward the blankets. "I - I like this."

Fjord squeezed his fingers, to give comfort where he could.

"No - I - no, not at all. If… if that's comfortable for you, I certainly won't object. All that fur is bound to make you very warm." 

Fjord bit his tongue. "To be entirely honest, this wasn't what I was hoping to hear. It's better. I don't know how to talk feelings, and I've never done a love confession and gotten _something_ back. Even if it's maybe not what I was hoping for, I think you said what needed saying. So. Thank you, Caduceus."

"Thank _you_ , Fjord," Caduceus said simply and genuinely. "We should probably sleep." 

"Yeah." It wasn't without regret that Fjord moved away so Caduceus could rouse Caleb, but he held to his words. It seemed that the Wildmother's gaze had moved on for the moment, because by the time Caduceus came to crawl under the blankets behind Fjord, his winter clothes had gone cool on the outside again, and his breath was beginning to steam again. Fjord felt him burrow in next to him, and shifted so they eventually lay, Caduceus' chest to his back, close and snug together. One of Caduceus' long arms came to wrap across his chest. 

"Oh, this is nice. I feel warmer already," Caduceus murmured. "Good night, Fjord." 

"Good night, Deucey." 

Fjord felt his eyes close to Caduceus' sonorous breathing, warm and tea-scented over the side of his face. 

For now, this was more than enough. They had all the time in the world to figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Elvie for their beta! ♥


End file.
